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There. I made it weird. My work here is done.
 
Nah, guys like Mike and anybody else keeping exotics as pets are all about their own ego.....no thanks.
This was back when I had brought my kids back to the States for a few years in order to meet the other side of the family they'd never seen. I wanted to continue with my career so we settled in Winston, Or. where I took over the carnivore dept. at Wildlife Safari.
Although it is captivity, it's a really great spot, better than the San Diego wildlife park IMO. We were known internationally for our cheetah breeding/conservation, and while I was there we had between 9 and 11 lions. This particular guy was abandoned by his mom at birth and after much thought as to whether to let him die naturally or take him in, I decided on the latter. It was the beginning of a beautiful relationship ;)
After deciding to try to reintroduce him back to the pride I had to slowly break my bond with him and very slowly and gingerly start the introduction process, which took about 6 months and was very tricky.....never been done before.
In the end it succeeded and he lived out his life as a lion amongst lions rather than among people. A good thing.
Here are some of the cats he became a part of again. The blackest maned lion was his daddy.
Shortly after this I decided I was done with captivity and started my work in Africa, which was to go on for About 15 years or so, with a couple of years doing wildlife undercover work in India in the middle.
Edited to add: actually in looking at this pic his pappa is the big fellow on the far left.
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I never knew this thread existed, I'm glad I found it for this story and pictures alone. Thanks for sharing.
 

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